Orations

²¹ Two ways were known to us, the first of greater value, the second of smaller consequence: the one leading to our sacred buildings and the teachers there, the other to secular instructors. All others we left to those who would pursue them— to feasts, theatres, meetings, banquets. For nothing is in my opinion of value, save that which leads to virtue and to the improvement of its devotees. Different men have different names, derived from their fathers, their families, their pursuits, their exploits: we had but one great business and name— to be and to be called Christians of which we thought more than Gyges of the turning of his ring, if this is not a legend, on which depended his Lydian sovereignty: or than Midas did of the gold through which he perished, in answer to his prayer that all he had might turn to gold— another Phrygian legend.

For why should I speak of the arrow of the Hyperborean Abaris, or of the Argive Pegasus, to whom flight through the air was not of such consequence as was to us our rising to God, through the help of, and with each other? Hurtful as Athens was to others in spiritual things, and this is of no slight consequence to the pious, for the city is richer in those evil riches— idols— than the rest of Greece, and it is hard to avoid being carried along with their devotees and adherents, yet we, our minds being closed up and fortified against this, suffered no injury.

On the contrary, strange as it may seem, we were thus the more confirmed in the faith, from our perception of their trickery and unreality, which led us to despise these divinities in the very home of their worship. And if there is, or is believed to be, a river flowing with fresh water through the sea, or an animal which can dance in fire, the consumer of all things, such were we among all our comrades.